[dumpster_fire]

Let me explain. Coding is the easiest because it's the most fun I get from my job. I don't have to talk to most people, I can have my alone time just writing code, cleaning it up, making it beautiful and lean, refactor as I like, whine about the unit tests taking more time than coding, and go home feeling like I've accomplished a lot. It's easy because that's all I have to focus on. Give it two weeks of junior devs telling me my coding style is outdated, and I've already adapted to the new meta.

System design at scale? Just trying to convince a separate team to work with us is a nightmare that I get insomnia from.

Coding is the easiest part of my job. FWIW I was just like you when I was a junior dev. Wondering why senior devs and engineering directors can't code. Now I know they can, but their time is better used to negotiate projects so that the junior devs can have their fun. Then I have to take time out to mentor junior devs on how to talk to people without being condescending, because that gets absolutely nothing accomplished in a large company.

[jstimpfle]

Maybe the directors at your particular company can code. But a lot of them really don't. They don't understand the technical aspects of the problem and this results in bad decisions.

I've had someone who drives expensive cars tell me to change a simple line based streaming text format to XML to "make networking more unified across the company projects". He suggested to add a 120 KLOC XML library that does memory allocations right and left to our <10K line embedded project with soft real time requirements.

To set the level of experience, that same person claimed in the same meeting that UDP wouldn't lose packets on a local connection. And when I didn't obey he played a power game.

The better a product is factored, the more all aspects of development are interdependent. Creating isolated work packages leads to a badly factored product with lots of duplication, creating bloat and bugs and preventing important features and optimizations. That's why sometimes, small teams of really smart hard working guys can be extremely productive in comparison.

That said, team size can be increased, while smartness and hard workingness of the team can generally not be increased, and a lot of tasks can also just be grinded through, or they need to be grinded through because there is no realistic way to avoid it.

[gilbetron]

> Give it two weeks of junior devs telling me my coding style is outdated, and I've already adapted to the new meta.

Brilliant! I always say that I know how to code, I just need time to figure out how you code so I can match the style. "Adapt to the new meta" is a great way to put it :)

When I'm coding these days I feel guilty, like I'm wasting my time doing something fun when I should be doing real work!